ontariolightning:Shouldn't CBS be more concerned about Football? Half the posters in this thread aren't even actual fans of hockey. If you aren't a serious fan of hockey you can just shut up and concentrate on a sport you do care about. Hockey doesn't need more Americans trying to change a game they don't watch. I agree with axing the instigator rule FWIW.

What a wonderful contribution. It's no wonder so many people can't see your posts.

Shouldn't CBS be more concerned about Football? Half the posters in this thread aren't even actual fans of hockey. If you aren't a serious fan of hockey you can just shut up and concentrate on a sport you do care about. Hockey doesn't need more Americans trying to change a game they don't watch. I agree with axing the instigator rule FWIW.

At the speed and ice surface size the game is played upon, nothing is going to achieve the goal of preventing bad hits. Given those factors, it's impossible to remove hitting from the game entirely, and as long as hitting is a part of the game, you're going to have bad - even dirty - hits.

Removing the instigator penalty might deter a few folks (and probably eliminate the "tiny pest" role filled by Barnaby, Avery, and until recently Cooke), but will do nothing to stop the big guy who likes to fight or is just good at it.

Increased penalties - up to and including shortening benches and death of first-born - isn't going to do it, because it's not like these guys are having long internal monologues with themselves out there about the merits and penalties of hitting a guy between the numbers five with a 15' running starts when their target is five feet from the boards. They see the opportunity and just go for it. And that's a direct function of the speed of the game; a large part of it is instinctual. A dude who is programmed to hit first is occasionally going to go for the hit that he shouldn't, because that's what he does.

Are there some hits that are clearly pre-meditated and individually disprove this (I think Kovalev's elbow on Darcy Tucker was the funniest)? Of course there are - stuff like permanently shortening benches or punative fines will help with those. There's an equal number which are also very clearly snap-decisions made and executed in less than a second - most of the times when a player is about to miss a check and extends to leg to tag the guy a little and it ends up being leg-on-knee, for example. Punitive measures won't help those, because the punitive measures aren't considered - and can't be - in the span the decision is made.

The only way around that is to effectively ban hitting from the ground up (train people NOT to hit in junior hockey, and have the trickle-up effect), and/or to move to a larger ice surface where there's more room to move (which won't stop dirty hits completely, but it'll lessen the number of them).

Large men+high speed+small area in which to move = collisions. Some of them are going to be worse than others. Physics is a biatch sometimes.

I'm trying to come up with something less likely than the NHL removing that rule. Can't think of anything.

IMO, when you have a player suspended, you should lose an actual lineup spot (maybe more than one, depending on the severity of the suspension). One of your players gets 5 games? For those five games, you can only dress 19 players instead of 20. If somebody gets 10 games, make it two line up spots lost. Adjust as necessary to make suspensions *team* punishments, rather than individual.

Until teams start losing games because their players are reckless, nothing is going to change. Big, dangerous hits weren't invented after the instigator rule.

Subby here...I submitted this at 3 or 4 in the morning and didn't think it would actually get posted since I figured Fark may not want another thread about violence in hockey that has nothing to do with fighting that eventually turns into a pro/anti-fighting thread.That being said...hockey is a physical and violent game. What drives me nuts as a hockey fan is the overall lack of accountability against people who deliberately go out to try to injure their opponent with unsportsmanlike and generally sociopathic behavior on account of the players. There is a big difference between a clean hit that results in an injury, a guy finishing a check that ends up resulting in an unintended injury due to the physics in the game and someone deciding that they are going to take someone out because they can and because they don't have enough respect for the game and the consequences of their actions to decide not to finish or more importantly start the hit.Back before they took away the discretion and the ability of players to police the conduct of the game players knew that if they had their stick too high or hit someone in a where the clear intent was to injure their opponent that person knew they would have to suffer the consequences of their actions. If you decided to take out an opposing player you had better be ready to drop the gloves and be ready to have your teammates get punched a few teams because you decided to be a prick and do something that wasn't within the spirit of the game. That is a core component of why fighting exists in hockey and if they ever take that away from the game completely these types of injuries will escalate because it's easier to pay a fine and sit for a few games than to have your team pissed off at you because you did something that's going to get them to have to defend your actions. Especially with mandatory helmets (which I agree with) it causes problems in that if players feel that their head is protected they don't think about the fact that the person they are hitting may not be due to the nature of the hit.Fighting exists in hockey for a reason and it with the people who fight who understand why fighting is part of hockey and not just an opportunity to fight it's a valuable tool to cut down on a lot of the more dangerous aspects of hockey. It's not like hockey exists as something people do between fistfights but if players aren't allowed to defend themselves and their teammates they are a lot more likely to leave the game on a stretcher than through the tunnel. A fight where two players drop the gloves is a lot more like a boxing match than an assault on the street, both are willing participants and they made a decision to punch someone in the face and get punched in return and there is a big difference between two guys squaring off and one guy just deciding to assault another player because he's upset about something else in the game.

/Never played organized hockey//Played hockey growing up, we fought...and then went back to playing hockey

Flags for footballTees for baseballNo touching in HockeyNASCAR, keep it under 30 mphBasketball, you just need to concentrate on paying your child support.

Don't like the sport? Have a problem with the rules? Don't watch it. Don't feel the need to enlighten others with your fresh perspective on something you've never been involved in yet somehow have all the answers to.

Tyrub:I don't think you can just eliminate the instigator rule, but I would like to see one change made to it.

Pisses me off to no end when someone throws a hard clean hit, and then has to duck and cover from the rest of the team going after him. I think the instigator should still apply in that case, in fact I think the punishment for instigating after a clean hit should involve match penalty and additional game suspension.

But if someone throws a dirty check (especially to the head), then no instigator punishment. All punishment could be reviewed again after the game if match penalty was assessed and should not have been, just like when ref misses original call for dirty hit and Shanny then gives a suspension.

What if a 3rd or 4th liner throws a clean hit that injures your top scorer? You don't think there should be a fight? I do. I don't care if its clean. A guy that barely plays just took out my best player. All bets are off.